


rank 8

by mopgoro



Series: the porn that will go on my callout post [9]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Blood and Gore, M/M, Necrophilia, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27394624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mopgoro/pseuds/mopgoro
Summary: Akechi and Ren finish their rank 8 duel.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren
Series: the porn that will go on my callout post [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885705
Comments: 12
Kudos: 65





	rank 8

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags.
> 
> Don't read this if you have suicidal ideation/self harm ideation.

Goro Akechi loses their duel with grace—and too easily. He looks like he’s barely broken a sweat when he clicks his saber off and holsters his gun. “This was not expected,” he says, with such coolness that the hairs on the back of Ren’s neck rise. “No wonder you’re the leader of the Phantom Thieves. You’ve caught up to me on this front already, too.”

He holds his hand out, like they’d just gotten through with a round of darts. Akechi’s smile looks like a bent wire. After a moment, Ren slides his hand into Akechi’s, holds it with just enough pressure to match. It’s not Akechi’s full grip strength. It’s not Ren’s either. After a perfunctory two shakes, Akechi lets go, leaving Ren’s hand in midair.

“Are you satisfied?” Ren asks.

Akechi’s eyes are oddly luminous behind the featureless eyeholes of his mask. Ren knows his answer before he even takes a breath. “Of course not.” The hint of a smile, or some other curve upwards to his lips, as he says: “But if we go any further, we’d both go beyond the point of no return, wouldn’t we?”

Ren doesn’t blink. Akechi’s face flashes an uncannily reptilian smile. Ren’s instinct tells him it’s a replica of a younger Goro Akechi’s smile, a Goro Akechi who was too naïve to live for long.

“In all honesty, I’d love to see just how far we can go… But we have an important mission coming up.” Akechi breaks eye contact, as if dismissing the conversation. “Until that’s finished, you’re a vital ally to me.”

Akechi starts walking with long, purposeful strides, only to stop short when Ren puts a hand on his shoulder. It is the first time Ren has ever touched him. Akechi would look almost offended, if his eyes weren’t so wide and oddly blank. “…Is something the matter,” says Akechi.

“We’re not done,” says Ren.

“That’s not for you to decide. I was the one who challenged you.”

“And I was the one who accepted it. It’s not over.”

Sharply, Akechi jerks his shoulder away from Ren’s hand. “I don’t believe I gave you permission to be familiar with me just because we’re on the same team, now. It’s _quite_ late, Joker. We have our fun, but we are heading home.”

Akechi takes a single step towards the exit and straight into a Tetrakarn. _Now_ he looks irritated. His voice is deceptively light for an expression so focused, something else’s voice entirely coming out of the mouth of a predator. “What game is this?” says Goro.

“The duel’s not over,” says Ren.

“You have beaten me to a standstill. I have several wounds. You are exhausted. If not know,” says Akechi, “then when _is_ the duel over?”

“Are you satisfied?” Ren asks again.

Akechi goes silent.

Ren takes one step closer. Akechi does not step away. “Is that really everything you had to give?”

“You don’t want to see everything I have to give.”

Ren takes another step. He is thoroughly in Akechi’s personal space. He can see Akechi’s need for physical distance and his unholy pride warring to a standstill that roots him to the ground, until Ren could be close enough to lean over, rest his chin over Akechi’s shoulder, whisper his next words to him. (He doesn’t.) He looks Akechi in the eye. They’re the same height. Ren has half an inch on him while in heels.

“Amamiya,” says Akechi. His voice sounds a little thick.

“What about me,” Ren says, “made you think I wouldn’t want to see everything you are?”

Akechi’s breath is one beat too fast, just on the right side of too thin. Ren isn’t sure when he leaned in close enough to feel Akechi’s breath between their faces.

There’s something wrong, Ren knows, with Goro Akechi. There’s something wrong with his face. Like a replacement made when someone wasn’t looking; the same make and model of human, the same human-looking boy, but swapped out for something… else.

It’s the _something else_ that Ren can almost taste.

Akechi’s eyes flicker once, down to Ren’s tongue sliding out between his teeth. Lingers on the shape of Ren’s mouth. “I want to see how far we can go,” Ren says quietly.

Hunger sharpens in Akechi’s eyes. His mouth opens. He swallows. He is leaning in, Ren realizes, and Ren watches how he exposes his throat so naturally, all his soft weak points within arm’s reach. Akechi’s hand hovers over Ren’s waist. Ren slides into his arms, praying for the trap to click shut.

“No!” Akechi blurts out. He snatches himself and his arm away. “I’m not having this conversation with you, Joker. We have to think about the mission. There’s a Palace run scheduled tomorrow. It’s—it’s a school night.” He clears his throat and glares down at the Mementos dirt like it’s physically slapped him. His hands are in fists. “I’m sure your friends are waiting for you,” he adds, with a rigidity that barely masks his bitterness.

Ren’s heart pounds.

“I’m not talking to you about this,” says Goro, even though Ren hadn’t said anything.

Ren sighs.

Akechi swallows audibly, steeling himself, then marches past without looking at him. “Let’s g—”

Akechi freezes.

One quarter second later, Arsène slams him into the dirt.

Whatever Akechi’s reasons for denying how much he wants to continue their duel, Ren neither knows nor cares. Akechi gasps and writhes under Arsène’s grip, making such a pretty face as Arsène’s claws tighten and Akechi’s chest heaves for air. “The duel isn’t over,” Ren says, like he isn’t watching Akechi’s beginning asphyxiation flush closely.

“ _Joker_!” Akechi snarls. “ _What_ on earth do you think you’re—"

Ren pulls out his gun. “You shouldn’t have let down your guard.”

It’s costing a hell and a half to keep Arsène manifested this long, but it’s worth it to see Akechi’s eyes widen as the air is slowly pushed from his lungs, as Ren comes closer with his gun in plain sight. “You really… mean to kill me,” Akechi pants.

“You can take it.”

Ren can practically see Akechi’s brain making the calculations. “It’ll—ngh—be murder—!”

“Only if you let me do it,” Ren says lightly.

He raises the gun. Under his mask, Akechi’s eyes widen impossibly wide, neat whites and reds. Sweats crawls down his long, beautiful neck. This is where Ren aims.

“Are you?” Ren asks. “Going to just lie down and let me kill you?”

Akechi’s eyes are going hazy. The oxygen deprivation, maybe, but his fury is still incandescent. His very skin is luminous with it.

Slowly, and without hesitation, Ren’s finger presses down on the trigger—

“— _LOKI!_ ” Akechi gasps—

*

There’s a moment when Loki bursts free in which Ren could run.

Ren doesn’t.

There’s a moment in which Akechi could let him, and pretend this never happened, or maybe Akechi could lie his way out.

Akechi doesn’t.

They both know they’re exactly where they should be.

*

Loki’s claws dig deep into Joker’s arm. Its palm is flat and massive, stretching the entire span of his elbow. He feels the first break in the bone. Then the second. Like snapping a pretzel stick in your bare hand. He can feel where his gun, crushed to a pulp, mangles deep into the fleshy mess that used to be his hand. Ren can’t stop himself from screaming.

“How do you like my true face, Joker?” Akechi’s smile beneath his black helmet is wide, lipless, full of teeth. “Still want my _everything_?”

 _Yes_ , Ren thinks, and screams, “Yes, yes,” through his numb lips, and thinks, _I’ve been looking for you my whole life. Yes. Yes. I was born for you._

*

In middle school, Ren began to cut himself. It was quite fun, but, distantly, he figured that this was perhaps not good behavior, since everyone else in the world seemed to turn up their noses at the girls who got caught. So he consulted a few books on it, searching for answers on why. The words fit on him like ill-fitting clothes; excellent in the catalog, bad on his frame. _Depressed. Suicidal. Impulsive._ (Maybe impulsive.) _Low self-esteem. Attention-seeking._ He didn’t want to die. He didn’t hate himself, or need to release his emotions, or need help regulating stress. He did not want people to notice his behaviors; he saw no need to explain it.

He did well in school. He went to sleep relatively on time. He had friends, or at least people who hung out with him. He was in a club, even. He was going through a parkour phase, like a lot of other middle schoolers; he _ooh_ ed and _aah_ ed over videos of professionals scaling sheer brick walls, doing flips down stairwells; he diligently taught himself to strengthen his core, his fingers, his toes.

He liked the lurch of his stomach when he looked down. He liked that if he fell and died, it’d be because he’d screwed up, or because he’d made a decision. His very life depended on something as real as his bare hands. He liked when he fell at low heights and bruised and scraped his knees. He liked when his palms grew worn from climbing concrete and his fingernails began to bleed. He liked picking at it. He liked the scabs of the cuts on his wrist popping free and bleeding fresh. He liked that, when he was up on the roof, nobody would ask him to explain it, try to make sense of him, try to fit him into their neat preconceived notions of what humans should be, or what kind of human climbs up to the top of a roof to look down.

Was that “wrong”?

According to who?

Ren never had a good sense of limits. Edges where the real world ended and unreality began. Other people seemed to believe instinctively in the fabric of reality as unchangeable, in staying within the lines. Objects did not fall up. People did not revive from death. Laws did not get broken. People stayed within their small worlds, traveling from home to school to home again, and did not venture out into the dark. For some reason, Ren was born without that sense of limit.

Here’s what he knew: He could do anything he could get away with, and he could do anything he would survive. And he could do even more if he didn’t care too much about the second half.

In elementary school, when he first began to stay alone at home, he took six plates down from the cupboards and broke them one by one in the sink. His parents came home and screamed at him, so the next time he did it, he stole his parents’ credit card numbers and went out and bought the same set of dishes and replaced them before they came home, and nobody noticed. Every night, back when his parents still ate dinner with him, the Amamiya family would sit down together and they would eat off dishes and bowls that looked exactly like the Amamiya family dishware, except it wasn’t.

In high school, he moved to Tokyo, and a man looked at him a bit too long on the subway. And Ren could do anything he could get away with and he could do anything he would survive, and there was nobody to stop him, so he went with him and lost his virginity in a car just before rush hour began.

In high school, he scaled high Palaces, stole hearts, flew through the air, crushed people’s corrupted careers. He could do anything he could get away with and he could do anything he would survive. And there was nobody to stop him.

If Ren wants to go out to Shinjuku and get fucked by the first man who’ll give him the time of day, what’s going to stop him? Shame? Guilt? A sense of self-preservation? If Ren wants to slit his wrists, mouth off on live TV, climb cognitive buildings to their peaks, gut shadows with his bare hands—who is going to stop him?

He looked for a long time in the psychology books to find out what the clinical diagnosis for wanting to peel up his skin, to look at the muscle twitch on the insides. He wanted to carve his arm down the middle, into round slices, the bone neat in the middle. Slide a knife around the edges of his nipples and pry them off his chest like stickers. He wanted to peel up the fingernails, pull out his eyes on a fishhook, swing by tenterhooks through his shoulder blades with his toes skimming the ground. He wanted to dig the knives into his wrists and watch his blood spill and spill and spill and spill like it’d never run out until it did.

*

“We’ll have to finish it, now,” Akechi says quietly.

Like Akechi is delivering the weather forecast. He’s making a calculation, considering the factors, and has determined: Today, we will need an umbrella. Now, we’ll have to finish it.

Ren cradles his wrecked arm to his chest. Mercifully, Akechi has left him to close his eyes and grit his teeth against the pain. Maybe because Akechi likes to see him bow his head in front of him.

Akechi examines the long, pointed claws at the ends of his new gauntlets, the ones that came with his new outfit. “I can’t let you go. Not after you’ve seen who I really am.”

“The Black Mask,” Ren says softly.

Akechi’s smirk is oddly empty. “If you go free, and start spreading around what you’ve seen about me, start poking your nose into the wrong circles…” Akechi sighs dramatically. “Oh, congratulations, Joker: We really can’t stop here, now.”

Ren’s heart is full to bursting. Some people say that you’ll know when you meet the reason you’re alive. Some people say that you’ll know it when you see it—like migration instinct, or an unbearable, inescapable magnetism. “Promise me,” Ren gasps.

Akechi sneers. It’s one of the most beautiful, magnificent sneers Ren has ever seen: The utter disgust, the haughtiness, the passion like a burning flame. Ren could stare at him forever. “You’re in position to be asking me to make any promises—”

“Promise me you won’t stop.”

Akechi laughs. Loudly, from high in his throat, and it skitters in and out of tune. Unlike the perfectly harmonized bell-like Detective Prince giggles from TV, this laugh sounds like skin tearing.

“Reverse psychology isn’t going to work on me, Joker. I don’t think you understand—” Akechi grabs Ren’s face with his claws, the ones that came with his new persona, gripping hard enough that Ren can feel blood trickle from the puncture points. “I’m not just going to kill you. I’m going to make good on your idiotic gluttony for pain. I’m going to finish what we started, and I—” Akechi leans in, so close that the edges of his helmet brush Ren’s nose. “—I’m not going to stop until I’m _satisfied_ with the pulp that’s left of your filthy, worthless corpse.”

The pain comes in a wave so loud that Ren can’t even speak, just leaves him panting and wheezing to get the air out. Akechi’s voice is pure derision: “Oh, the great leader of the Phantom Thieves, crawling on the ground like a worm—”

“Please,” Ren grits out.

“And begging, too! Music to my ears to hear how the mighty fall—”

Ren slumps forward and presses a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to the side of Akechi’s helmet. Akechi shuts up. “Give me _everything_ ,” Ren says breathily.

The hatred in Akechi’s face is so raw, like all the filters of his masks and pleasant faces have been stripped away and Ren is left looking directly into the sun. And Akechi is looking only at him, and does not see Ren pull his dagger from his coat pocket, slipped underneath his sleeves.

“Liar,” Akechi says quietly.

“Not to you,” Ren replies.

“You’re a freak.”

Ren’s lips brush against the ear guard on Akechi’s helmet: “You’re the one who isn’t satisfied,” he whispers.

“There’s something wrong with you.”

Ren doesn’t really have a witty response to that, and Akechi is supposed to be his rival who he never allows to one-up him, so instead Ren just shoves the dagger into Akechi’s stomach.

Akechi howls like a wild animal and slams him into the dirt. Ren wraps his legs around Akechi waist, rolls with the punch and twists until Akechi’s underneath him and twists the knife until Akechi’s eyes roll back. Ren’s good hand slides under Akechi’s neckguard and rips it up and off. He is very intent on strangulation. He wants to see Akechi’s eyes fade to grey in front of him. He wants to see Akechi’s neck wreathed in the red of Joker’s gloves.

Akechi is not the only person who’s dreamed of murder.

It’s easy, even. Ren’s hands squeeze impossibly tight. He can see Akechi’s neck grow smaller in his grip. Loki appears, then disappears as the air evaporates in Akechi’s lungs.

It’s too easy.

“ _Come on_ ,” Ren hisses, and thinks to himself: _Is this all you have?_

Akechi’s eyes are screwed shut. “Crow!” Ren snarls. He digs his nails into the flesh, practically shakes Akechi in his hands like he’s trying to wake him up as Akechi’s mouth goes slack, his skin turning an ugly mottled color. “You promised me the best! All that preening, all that taunting—”

Akechi’s lips move.

“—and you don’t even have enough in you to kill me—?!”

Claws sink into Ren's back.

His spine goes taut as his eyes roll back and he can feel the serrated edges of his gloves tearing through the thin skin to the back muscles underneath, burrowing and clawing and scratching and the second the claws hit bone he screams and arches back. Ren scrabbles at Akechi’s neck, uselessly trying to find something to tether him to the ground as his head spins off into a haze of blood loss and pain and Akechi’s claws find purchase through his ribs and yanks him up and off him.

Ren’s fingers slip from Akechi’s throat, and then the blunt side of _Laevateinn_ slams Ren into the wall.

Ribs shatter like dishes under his skin. As if it isn’t his own, Ren watches his own body slump to the floor.

The room spins.

A long lean shape comes closer; Ren smiles, wanting Akechi to know how glad he is to see him, like Ren is waiting at the Leblanc door for Akechi to come inside, or standing outside the aquarium for their date. Ren twists and cries out especially loudly as Akechi crushes Ren’s wrist beneath his heel, to let Akechi know how much it hurts.

There’s a short laugh. Another burst of giggles. Doesn’t sound like Ren’s.

“Disgusting,” Akechi says.

Akechi’s heel grinds. The thin skin of Ren’s wrist twists and breaks and bleeds. Bones splinter. Ren’s head feels drunk. “I’ve always hated you,” Akechi says quietly.

Ren swallows. Licks his lips.

“I’ve been waiting to kill you for ages,” Akechi says, with an unsettling new evenness. “I’ve dreamed about seeing you under my heel from the moment we met. Trash like you—”

The boot heel lifts, and then slams home—

Pain. Ren blacks out. Pain brings him back. His own dagger through the mangled mess of his wrist bones, Akechi eyes huge and bright in his blurry vision.

“Trash like you don’t deserve happiness,” Akechi tells him, like he’s telling a lover a secret. “You should know your place.”

Akechi moves to pull away. Without thinking, Ren’s legs lock around Akechi’s waist.

“Teach it to me,” Ren whispers.

Akechi’s face crumples with fury. The heel of his palm crashes into Ren’s eye, grinding his face into the dirt. “You think this is a game?!” Akechi hisses. “You think I’m _joking_?”

“Never.”

“I dreamed of killing you.” Akechi leans in, eyes wide, expression blank and alight with something lurking just below his skin. “I dreamed of pulling your intestines out with my bare hands. Scooping your eyes from your skull. Murdering your _fucking_ teammates, one by one, in front of your eyes.”

Ren smiles against Akechi’s hand. Waits until Akechi leans in, and then whispers back, just as gently like a secret for the two of them alone: “What are you waiting for?”

Then he cries out as Akechi slams his skull into the dirt.

“I’ll fucking peel your mouth from your face if you won’t take me seriously.”

“I was—” Ren gasps.

“You think you could ever defeat me?!” Akechi snarls. “You think you’re—you’re better, you’re so much holier than thou—that you’re _above me_?! _Me_? After _everything_ I’ve done; lose to _you_ , the fucking trash of society—"

Ren starts laughing. It’s nothing to do with Akechi. His heart feels light. Everything feels right.

Akechi’s face contorts in fury, and Ren can’t help himself. He licks his lips, grinds his crotch against Akechi, and Ren moans, loud and wanton with all the air left his lungs.

“ _Whore_ ,” Akechi seethes, and wrenches Ren’s knee away from his waist and shoves it up to his chest, spreading him wide. Ren’s erection is unmistakable with his pants spread thin across his crotch. “You think this is a joke?! Am I never good enough for you—?!”

Akechi’s the only one who’s ever been _remotely_ good enough—the moments where Akechi was close to killing him might be the only moments Ren’s ever really loved—Ren grabs him by the neck with his free arm, the mangled one Loki destroyed, and hook Akechi around the neck with his shattered elbow, and pulls him down for a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss rather than say any of that allowed, straining his neck to shove his tongue between Akechi’s teeth. Akechi shrieks into his mouth and bites him back with such force that Ren is sure his skull will crack like an egg against the Mementos dirt, and it’s worth it to feel Akechi’s claws ripping at his thighs, shredding his pants like tissue paper. Blood licks hot down the length of Ren’s cock as Akechi nearly bends him in half and shoves his claws without ceremony into Ren’s hole.

He’s being torn apart from the inside. He can feel Akechi’s claws pulling skin free when Akechi pulls his fingers out, literally scooping flesh out. The world goes white with pain. Akechi’s teeth scrapes across his mouth, the corners of his lip, peeling him open to devour him whole. Akechi’s teeth on his neck. _More_ , he tries to say, but he can’t hear himself anymore. The knife tips of Akechi’s gauntlets reach someplace they shouldn’t. Ren’s body spasms like a doll on a string. Iron is sticky in his lungs.

“I hate you,” Akechi pants into his ear. “I hate you so much—smug son of a _bitch_ —”

 _I hate you too_ , Ren wants to say, but it’s hard when he’s folded in half and Akechi has four clawed fingers curling inside him, and also when Akechi has one hand on his hair, slamming him into the dirt.

“Shut up!”

He hadn’t said—

“Know your place! How dare you—how could you— _stop_!”

Ren can hear someone laughing.

“I’ve won!” Akechi screams. “Shut up! Shut up, shut up—”

Ren’s giggles choke to a gurgling halt as Akechi flips him over and shoves his throat into the dirt, cutting off the rest of his air. “Scum!” Akechi’s voice is howling, and then Ren can feel himself stretched wide around Akechi’s cock as it sinks deep to the hilt, Ren’s ass flush against Akechi’s hips in a single thrust, the cockhead pushing so deep he can almost taste it in his throat—or that might just be Akechi’s clawpoints pushing their way into the tendons of his neck.

“I can’t fucking stand you,” Akechi hisses. “Dirt too arrogant to learn its place— _mocking_ me— _taunting_ me—”

A hard thrust that drags Ren’s face across the floor. He can feel skin peel off. Dirt in his wounds. Dirt on his tongue, in his open and panting mouth.

“—what will it take for me to be your equal?! You think you’re too good for me—?!”

 _Never_ , Ren wants to say, but just then Akechi sinks his teeth into the meat of Ren’s neck and Ren can feel something in his windpipe crunch in his jaw. He can feel Akechi’s fingers scrabbling along the wounds in his back, opening him up further. He can feel Akechi’s claws digging in between the ribs, gripping hard to hold him in place as Akechi’s hips find their rhythm, slam home every time to the squelch and stink of blood.

His vision is going grey. He can’t feel much of anything anymore beyond the thick stretch of Akechi’s cock inside him. His arms have gone entirely numb.

“I’ll show you,” Akechi whimpers against his back. _You already have_ , Ren breathes. _You’re the only person who ever could. The only person who ever has_. “I’ll kill you,” Akechi’s voice cries. The earsplitting crack of Ren’s ribs in Akechi’s grip. Akechi’s hands inside his chest, fingers around his spine, lifting Ren’s chest up so Akechi’s hips can drive harder, deeper, so Akechi can lean close to him and pant, “I hate you, I hate you, Ren, ah, _Ren_ —”

 _Goro_ , Ren wants to scream, wants Akechi and Mementos and everyone to know how good it feels to have Akechi inside him, to let everyone that Ren is dying and that Akechi is killing him and Ren has never felt so alive, that Akechi has never once let him down, that Akechi’s finally given him a death worth living for. “Yes,” Ren gasps out, once, “ _please_ —” and he is coming and his mind is soft and his body is falling and he is happy at last.

*

Ren slumps against the floor and Goro pulls out, wrenches him over onto his back. Ren’s head sags, rolls across the ground. Limp. Given up. Defeated at last.

Goro can feel his own grin, manic, stretching his lips flat across his teeth.

Without thinking, Goro slaps the corpse across the face.

Red blossoms in long lines across the skin. Ren’s wide eyes don’t even blink.

No resistance. Nothing. Goro slaps him again the other way, and the head rolls back, and Goro bursts into wild laughter to see Ren’s beautiful, bloody curls scattered across the dirt.

“Is that all it takes?” Goro’s voice taunts. “Dead already, Joker?! When we were just getting started—!”

Ren’s corpse is still half hard, and Goro pins him down by the shoulders, grinds Ren’s cock against his own ass. His wet cock smears even more precum across Ren’s unmoving stomach.

“Even at your best—you’re beneath me—” Goro pants. “I expected better—”

His hips grind faster, his breath loud in his own ears, eyes fixed on Ren’s open eyes. His eyeballs look especially flat and wet, two circles of jelly in his eye sockets now that there’s no life in them, no knowing joke in the corners; Goro scrabbles for Ren’s hand and sucks at the tips of his fingers to chase the warmth there and does not look away as the rigid mask of death begins to settle across Ren’s cheeks.

He can almost see Ren’s last laugh, his perfect smug smiles, and Goro can hear himself keening as he sucks Ren’s lukewarm fingers deeper into his throat and just as he feels the scrape of Ren’s fingernails across the top of his mouth, as if Ren were fingerfucking his mouth, Goro bites hard and can’t stop himself from letting his eyes slip closed as he finally comes across Ren’s chest. The fingerbones crunch between his molars. The fingernails fracture. Goro screws his eyes shut and grinds and grinds and wills this moment to last.

It does not. Slowly, his cock starts to hurt, and the fractured fingernails are scraping his mouth raw, so he spits Ren’s hand out. It flops to the ground. Ren has always been pale, but his hand looks especially pale just then, chewed up and literally spat out on the floor and leaking blood at the slow pace of a bag of blood without a beating heart to circulate blood through veins. It looks very dead. Ren looks very dead. Goro’s cum looks oddly congealed on Ren’s stiffening skin.

The remains of Ren’s face have the frozen look of a corpse already. He looks like someone just after a joke has stopped being funny, after they’ve started to calm down from their laughter, and perhaps realized they laughed too loudly.

Mementos is very quiet.

Goro’s won.

Goro’s tongue slides across his teeth. Grimy. Tastes like Ren’s blood.

Ren doesn’t pull away when Goro pushes Ren’s sweaty hair away from his eyes. Goro’s still smiling because he forgot to stop. He means to say, _This is where your justice ends_ , or _Trash like you should have accepted your place long ago_ , or _Where are your teammates now?_

Goro doesn’t say any of those things.

Now that Ren’s seen him go this far—Goro doesn’t have a choice. He’ll have to call off the infiltration into the Phantom Thieves and Sae’s palace. He’ll have to make some other arrangement to widely publicize the end of the Phantom Thieves for Shido’s fame. Samarecarm isn’t an option when what Ren’s seen here could destroy every single one of Goro’s well-made plans. Goro can’t revive him without causing a million and one other problems for himself and Shido, and then he’ll just have to kill Ren again in a week. He’ll have to leave Ren’s body here.

Ren was always going to die, but—they couldn’t have waited? Gone to Jazz Jin at least one more time? How was Goro supposed to know that this was the last time he’d ever see Ren alive? How was he supposed to know that this was finally the last fight between the two of them that he’d been waiting for? He hadn’t been ready. It wasn’t enough. Goro cups Ren’s cheeks—what’s left of them—in his hands, almost convinced that at any second, Ren will reveal his master plan all along, that he’d only been faking it to get the upper hand—and Ren’s eyes don’t focus. His skull is heavy in Goro’s palms.

“Is that it?!” Goro snaps.

Ren doesn’t respond.

“Joker. I can’t let you leave after you’ve seen my true self. I can’t let you go if you know about Loki. You know that, right?”

Ren doesn’t respond.

Goro’s gauntlets dig into Ren’s skin. “You knew I was going to kill you, didn’t you? Are you dying on your own terms? Is that what this is?!”

Ren doesn’t respond.

“I can’t revive you, Joker!” Goro snaps. His entire face feels hot with fury. “I can’t let you win! If you’re going to survive, if you’re going to pull this off, you have to take that win from me it yourself—!”

Ren does not respond. When Goro lets go of his face, his head hits the ground with a meaty _thud_.

His eyes are burning. “Is that really all you have, Joker?”

No—no, that can’t be it. Joker was so bright, so clever, so driven and passionate—able to surprise him at every turn, thinking outside limits that Goro didn’t even know he had. His growth as a Persona-user had been frightening. The mania in Ren’s eyes wasn’t something that could die. Every time they met, Goro felt like he’d been brushed by something unknowable, something he desperately wanted to know inside and out; every time Ren studied him from across Leblanc’s counter, Goro knew that he’d never fully understand, because Ren was growing and mutating at a pace that Goro could never keep up with. Ren would surpass him. Goro could never stand to let him. Ren was a new person every day, and Goro had wanted to see the entire endless cast of who Ren could be every day of his life; he’d wanted—he’d wanted—

That can’t be it—

There’s nobody here to see him do it. Before the rigor mortis sets in, Goro pulls Ren up, presses them chest to chest, drapes Ren over him like a safety blanket. Buries his nose in Ren’s neck to smell the sweat, the last traces of soap in his hair. Ren’s open throat slides wetly against his shoulder, but his remaining arm still has enough of a hand for Goro to hold, for Goro to wrap around his own cock and work himself back up to hard. Ren’s bitten-through skin and ruined nails catches roughly on his cock as Goro drags his limp hand across his flesh. Goro wraps his legs around Ren’s mutilated waist to hold Ren up and keep him in place, so he doesn’t slide away, and holds him bone-crushingly close in a way he never would have dared if Ren were still alive. He comes to the feeling of Ren’s callouses, to the memory of Ren’s long fingers flipping Joker’s dagger back and forth, the gleam of the blade as sharp as Ren’s smile; and it’s not enough, it’s not anywhere near enough, because Goro had been looking for Ren his whole life without knowing it and nothing is the same without him at all.

*

A few months later, Masayoshi Shido is elected as Prime Minister. A week after that, teenaged celebrity Goro Akechi is found hanged in his apartment, his desk chair knocked over under his feet. He did not leave a note.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mopgoro)


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